Posted
by
kdawsonon Wednesday April 21, 2010 @08:12AM
from the spreading-disruption-wherever-it-goes dept.

theodp writes "Cars.com's David Thomas speculates that the iPad could prove to be a serious problem for automakers that charge a ransom for rear entertainment systems. The base iPad, Thomas notes, costs far less than most DVD options offered by automakers. Ford charges $1,995 for a dual-headrest-mounted DVD system in its Flex crossover. In the Acura MDX, its single-screen system, with three wireless headsets and a 9-inch screen, costs $1,900. At $500 a pop, giving two kids their own iPads would cost far less than what the automakers charge for an ICE system. The Cars.com article mentions some of the advantages of ICE, including being weather-tested to work from -5 to 160 degrees F (-20 to 71 C), and being far less prone to breakage."

I would prefer the iPad, because I personally hate a bunch of shit in the car, including a mound of DVDs. They just clutter up the whole car, and usually become unplayable either through sticky fingers or scratches from going all around uncased, and what not. Not to mention that in an accident, shit flying all around can cause problems. Heck, it can cause an accident just from sliding around and somehow ending between your feet and the brake.

In fact, unless it's a real car trip, I hate the thought of bringing up kids conditioned not to be away from a screen for a minute, being fed it nonstop. Not too long ago, once you got out of the house, you got to escape the TV at least.

At least a portable gaming system is interactive. The iPad wouldn't be too bad either, with movie downloads and whatnot, especially netflix. But I won't be buying downloaded movies from apple or anyone else until the sell DRM-less versions just like the music now. They might as well, people just convert and upload the DVDs/Blu-Ray without problems as it is.

But I do wish a simple book would be adequate these days. And I'm saying this as a frequent flyer who appreciate the personal entertainment systems in the seats these days, and their role in shutting the brats up.

There's a cool app on the App Store called "Air Video", it requires a server app on your normal PC (Windows/Mac), and a client App on the phone, the server reads your videos from its disk, converts it on the fly to an iPhone-compatible format, and streams it over WiFi (or 3G if your 3G is good enough) to the phone.

I suppose for the ultimate in-car entertainment hackery, one could store an SSD-disked PC in the trunk, with WiFi that can connect to the "MyGarage" SSID, as well as offering in-car WiFi (or would that have to go the other way around, the home PC/server connecting to the "MyCar" SSID?), and with a network drive so you can just drag&drop stuff from your home PC "into" your "car". Maybe cron-job too for TV episodes. Add Wake-on-Bluetooth too so you can just click a button to turn on the in-car PC from the comfort of your own desk.

Would surely save a lot of time compared to doing an offline conversion/USB sync...

XBMC is one awesome approach that provides movies and gaming. I too have a friend who did this.

Another friend of mine had an interesting setup with a custom touchscreen in the center of the dash and two more in the headrests for the rear passengers that were connected to a microATX PC in the trunk. mp3car.com provides a ton of resources for the project. In this friend's case, he had a media center, GPS receiver with navigation software, an OBDII diagnostics utility, and a few other neat utilities. It was

I bought a WD TV mini [wdc.com] and burned my movie collection onto a 500GB USB drive. I didn't rip out the old DVD player I just connected the WD TV to the existing AV ports. We still use the DVD player for movies we haven't converted yet, but have access to the rest of our movie catalog while in the car. The best part is that the DVD's aren't constantly getting scratched up by the kids. Oh and it frees up a lot of space in the glove box where we had a case of DVD's now there is just a USB drive and the very very small WD TV box.

Plus good luck fixing it. At least a non-integrated unit can be easily replace (at least much more cheaply) and is also upgradeable.... for instance, what if you start buying Blu-ray, what good is that DVD player in the car.

These days, what often brakes in cars are the electronics, of course some manufacturers are better than others although some are surprisingly bad (Mercedes) -- and when you have to fix problems out of warranty, it can be as expensive as any mechanical problem.

Most people would probably not know how to rip their latest Disney DVD's to a format the iPad can play.
People buy DVD systems because it's as easy as just popping the disc in there and pushing the play button.

The portable unit one we got cost about euro120, but it has dual displays which attach to the headrests and provide independent volume controls. It can play almost anything, including DivX movies and MP3 music as well as regular DVDs and CDs. The headphones are not wireless, but I don't see that as justifying an additional euro1500+ for the automaker's system.

Really. I am sick and tired of seeing posts on/. on the Ipad. It's a waste of our time. Wasn't/. supposed to be "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? Ipads are not news for nerds, nor are they stuff that matters. Yuck.

Ipads are news for the USA's middle class conspicuous consumers. You know, being "cool".

It is not hard to go to a country that is not the USA and see editorial pieces in mainstream papers openly mocking people in their own country who buy Apple products. (I am in New Zealand, and the NZ Herald had a cartoon about this recently.)

Then you are being deliberately dishonest. You know full well almost all product stories are being spammed at the editors by marketing parasites until one gets through, not ordinary readers. Apple is one of the worst.

---

You're a fool if you think advertising or insurance pays for anything at all.

The Edsel was actually an excellent tech testbed and spawned several ideas used in later products, despite being a financial failure as a product itself.

Either way, I'm not sure that I can take the word of an AC on slashdot that the iPad, which has been on sale for about a month is a "dismal failure" and a "turd of a product". From what I have seen of a broad range of reviews, both positive and negative, I don't think it can really be classified as that.

Perhaps your anti-Apple anger is making you resort to hyperbole. Perhaps that is also why you accidentally checked the "post anonymously" checkbox.

Quit bitching or go somewhere else. Lots of Apple fans read _and contribute to_ Slashdot. There are a variety of subjects I don't care about but I know numerous Slashdot readers are passionate about them so I know I'll continue to see those subjects in submissions. I just skip them. The content I want to read is interesting enough that I can just skip over the content I'm "sick and tired" of seeing. So, seriously, you have a choice - quit bitching about it or go read your geek news somewhere else. It isn't going to change so you might as well complain about death and taxes while you're at it.

Yes, bringing a collection of a hundred DVDs is far easier than storing those hundred on 64GB of flash memory.

Seriously though, if you know what software to use (Handbrake has built-in presets for ipod and Apple TV; iPad is only a matter of time if those don't work) it is a piece of cake to DeCSS a movie and convert it to H.264. From there, just drag into iTunes and sync. For a one-time viewing, a portable DVD player may be more convenient. But if you plan ahead or have movies that your kids want to watch

Yes, bringing a collection of a hundred DVDs is far easier than storing those hundred on 64GB of flash memory.

Pray tell what kind of quality you'd have to rip down to to get 100 movies onto 64gb of flash memory, some of which is already used by the OS and apps.

I think most people would rather keep their cheap, rather small, perfectly portable DVD wallets [google.co.uk] and not end up with abysmal quality, and have to spend hours and hours and hours for the privalage I'm afraid.

I could understand your argument if anyone actually carried their DVDs around in their original standard DVD sized cases, or if anyone owned an automatic disc loading and ripping device, or had the will to literally spend days manually loading, unloading, and ripping their DVDs. But right now, it's far too time consuming and dull a job, for most, particularly when you can just buy a cheap DVD wallet to carry the lot around with you.

Your sarcasm was misplaced- carrying a hundred DVDs around really is easier than ripping them to flash memory, and you wont have to try and destroy the quality to squeeze them into 64gb of storage either.

64GB / 100 = 640MB. That's 10MB less than a standard CD, so the quality could be something like what we used to share before DVD-Rs were widespread. Using a more modern codec would get better quality. They'll be watched on a small screen anyway, it's probably not a problem.

I wouldn't want to leave 100 DVDs in a wallet in a car anyway. They're susceptible to heat/sun damage, and could be stolen very easily.

Who is going to carry around 100 of their original, expensive dvd's in their car? Waiting for them to get stolen, damaged by kids, scratched in the player when you take a speedbump? If you want to carry around so many movies, i think most people want to carry around copies, which involves de-css'ing them anyway. And then, carrying them around in the flash memory of a player seems suddenly a whole lot easier than burning them on physical media.

What we need to do is stop bombarding kids with constant streams of electronic entertainment.If a kid always has a screen with moving pictures (be it a dvd player, game or whatever) in front of his face, how do you expect them to sit still when you take it away. It like digital crack.Yes, kids can be a pain - but part of being a parent is dealing with those situations by interacting with them in a positive way.I'm not saying no TV ever, but people wonder why kids have attention deficit disorder. I'm sure most of those kids can hold their attention perfectly fine when it's focused on a TV. How is a teacher supposed to teach a class when most of the kids are used to constant electronic entertainment?

Kids these days with their "in car entertainment" and their "iPods" and whatnot; when I was their age all we had to do in the back of the station wagon was fight with our brothers and sisters and make faces at the cars behind us! And we were damn glad to do it!

No kidding! We made our own entertainment as kids. We played games, and not just the tame ones like "I spy" and the like. We made our OWN games, thus increasing our creativity! We played games like, "What's that smell?" and "Does this hurt?" and "Let's make the veins pop out on the driver's forehead"! And, of course, the ever popular "I'm not touching you!" while waggling a finger mere millimeters away from your siblings body after being instructed not to touch them. This last game was a real challenge, as a pothole or sudden change of direction could jostle you just enough to come into contact with your sibling, and therefore breaking the "rules" and getting you into trouble.

Yeah, do kids even play the "license plate game" anymore?
They'll never know the reward of hours in the car, and then
the majesty of the Delaware Memorial Bridge looming up on the
horizon. "Daddy, is that the golden gate?" "No. This is Delaware".
I bet they just look up from their gadget and go "hmph" if the
'rents point out the landmarks. Are these kids going to be so
overstimulated that the only thing to turn them on will be something
truly dangerous?

Kids these days with their "in car entertainment" and their "iPods" and whatnot; when I was their age all we had to do in the back of the station wagon was fight with our brothers and sisters and make faces at the cars behind us!

Being serious now, I do feel bad for today's kids. When I was growing up, you could sleep across the back seat or climb up front to hang out with the parents. On quiet stretches of the interstate, Dad would let me sit on his lap and steer while he worked the pedals. Sure, it was unsafe as hell, but it beat being continuously strapped down as is mandated now. I can't blame the kids for wanting their DSes and iPods because they're stuck in their seats for 8 hours at a time.

Have you ever tried to survive a 10 hour car ride as a kid? Unless you have entertainment (and no, talking to your parents doesn't count for more than 15 minutes), you will get extremely bored before you're even halfway through.

Actually, I survived many such trips as an only child in a one parent home, and the only electronic entertainment was music. It was not that bad, I did not get bored speaking to my mom and looking at the various oddities in the rural regions between New York City and Toronto.

It was not just my own mother; I have seen plenty of parents who are able to keep their children engaged, even on very long trips.

So the kids listen to the iPod built into it, or the built in audio part of the car entertainment system. Or read a book.

I think it's a huge (and totally disingenuous) leap to go from "has ICE" to "does not pay attention or know how to engage their kids". It is just one of several options available to parents, or even as a perk for adult passengers on a long road trip.

Just because they have a system like this does not make them bad parents, which seems to be the inference here.

Well keep in mind that the "music" I was referring was a radio, which actually led to a lot of fun in the rural areas (at least for city folk like us).

In any case, it really depends on how people use these systems. Someone mentioned that his wife sits in the back seat with the kids watching a movie -- not such a bad use case. On the other hand, people seem to be talking about giving each kid an iPad, which sounds like "leave them alone with their electronic toys."

As any parent with a kid will (or should!) tell you, giving them access to things like that is all part of a managed activity schedule, much like access to TV or the computer. You can set aside times when your children can use these things, and for how long, and various other rules. In car entertainment is just another medium where this occurs.

in the same way that multiple TV sets in homes added more flexibility for families where someone wants to watch channel A while others watch channel B, the in car systems mean not everyone has to listen to the radio, which can be a total blessing if your kids really want to listen to the high school musical soundtrack *again*, or the Bob the Builder greatest hits.

Like anything involving parenting though, not everyone makes good parents, but allowing kids access to things like this doesn't automatically put people into that category.

I can't dedicate much attention span to anything else while I drive. As such, keeping a child entertained during even a couple of hours drive is very difficult for me. My solution? Drive at night, when the kid sleeps

I'm pretty sure most people on here were children at some point and probably are quite familiar with the situation you are describing. If our parents survived without in-car entertainment systems surely modern day parents can as well?

I don't know any parents who didn't have some form of in-car entertainment system. That system only recently includes video as an option, but there was certainly a system of some sort. In my childhood, our in-car entertainment system generally included action figures, activity books, reading books, and music. My kids have DVD players, activity books, and toys as their in-car entertainment system.

Have you ever tried to survive a 10 hour car ride as a kid? Unless you have entertainment (and no, talking to your parents doesn't count for more than 15 minutes), you will get extremely bored before you're even halfway through.

Once upon a time, many years ago when I was a kid, we used to use books for our in-car entertainment. Worked quite well, really.

They're awesome ways to keep kids entertained when you're on an 8-hour road trip to take them to visit family and stuff. It's not a matter of "not paying attention" to them since they only come out in preparation for a long trip (at least in our case). They're not necessary, but it makes a trip much more enjoyable for everybody and significantly cheaper than flying. Often it's my wife and the kids in the back watching a movie together, talking, and basically hanging out while I'm driving.

I agree. I think portable DVD players, gameboys (I know they're DS/DSi/DSiXXXL and PSPs now, but still), etc. have their place on long car trips...but it is a shame how many parents pop in the DVD for their kid when they're just running to the store for milk, etc. These are the times to engage your child. Long trips are the times when you pop in the movie or whatever to keep them from getting into fights.

You don't have kids, do you? We bought our kids portable DVD players for our trip to Florida a couple of years ago. Well worth the money. This year, we'll be bringing the iPad along for the ride. Wife and I need some entertainment for the road too.

Sure. I have a just-turned-2 year old. Legally he cannot be placed in the front seat (even with a proper carrier), so his car seat is in the row of seats behind me, where I cannot even physically touch him. I cannot read to him, or play with him, or do anything but say words out of my mouth. Last week we made a 14 hour round trip (and Mom couldn't go), and I was very, very thankful that he enjoys watching Curious George and Elmo on the integrated entertainment system, because otherwise he would have been miserable - bored out of his mind, screaming his head off, and stressing me out and taking my concentration away from driving.

We stopped and grabbed a couple DVDs out of a RedBox for a buck a piece, and returned them the next day at our local RedBox when we got home.

We even have a TV and DVD player at our house too. More than one, believe it or not.

So the kids are going to bring their iPad into the store/mall/whatever every damn time it parks?

No, the parents are or they can take the risk of locking it out of sight such as in the trunk. Further, the kids don't need it for short trips to the mall and can leave it at home. Do you start playing a DVD on the in-car entertainment system for 10 minute drives?

I was going to say the same thing. ICE systems are less nickable and harder to resell than the iPad. Also it's harder to accidentally leave it in a hotel room or forget to bring it with you. Not that I'd pay for an ICE system anyway. A cheap portable DVD seems like a better bet.

Automakers still seem to charge ridiculous amounts for integrated navigation systems - the fact that you can pick up a GPS unit for under $100 doesn't seem to prevent them from charging $500-2000 for nav systems. Somehow I doubt they'll change anything here either. I figure that the thinking is they can charge a huge premium for the benefit of having a system integrated vs. just a separate device.

less than $100 for the TomTom and Navigon apps in the app store. New Android phones ship with the same capability built in. some people would rather pay the higher car payment than get a smartphone and pay the $30 a month data charge.

The worst thing about the integrated sat-navs is that they are often worse in every way(except the awkward cigarette-lighter-for-power and suction cup mount aspect) than even substantially cheaper discrete units.

Standalone GPS units live in a brutal darwinian hell-world, where only the strong or the super-cheap survive. Integrated units live sheltered lives; bundled with much more expensive objects. The difference shows.

Yeah, that's always seemed like the craziest thing to me. Whenever I've been driving with someone with a luxury car and some expensive $2000 nav system built in, I've been kind of blown away that the system seems like something from 10 years ago, incredibly inferior to even the base model Garmin or TomTom units you can get for under $100.
It really does seem like the only thing they have going for them is being integrated into the dash rather than a unit you have to put above your dash, but still...

That would be great to have just a "Interaction Unit" (screen + joystick/ok/cancel + antenna) that can be plugged in GPS boxes from multiple vendors so you can pay for the integration while keeping your freedom to upgrade for the GPS unit of your choice.

i figured that out when the iPad was first announced. $2000 for a glorified $300 DVD system vs $500 for a dumbed down computer that can play movies and games and you don't need to take shiny discs with you that scratch easily

and you can use the ipad outside the car as well. and if you're an IT geek with kids, the App Store has tons of IT management apps to give you console and any kind of remote access to almost any platform from anywhere. just in case you get a call while on vacation that something is wrong

great support - checkOS is built on Open Source - checkgood build quality - checkworks with MS Exchange out of the box - checktons of server/network management apps available - checkgives me console/RDP access to any server i manage - checkOS 3 is up to 176 apps and OS 4 will max it to over 2000 apps on an iphone. Android and blackberry are crippled in the amount of apps you can install on themplenty of games available for the train ridemy son loves it and tons of kids games on iti can teach my son to code

Though it doesn't have a key element for kids: A DVD drive or a suitable ability to play the same movies they watch at home.

Anyone who has a kid knows if they like their kids movies then there's got to be a easy way for them to watch it. Most parents aren't going to be ripping their kid's whole collection of DVDs and putting them on an iPad. There needs to be a connection here for this to be even semi-viable for parents. That or iTunes is going to have to try to get some more kid's videos than I believe it has.

I don't think Jr is really going to be all that excited about all the apps.

I don't know, my 3.5 year old daughter and 1.5 year old son love daddy's "omputer" far more than TV right now. They can draw and color wherever they touch, then send the picture to grandma. Play animal sounds by touching the picture. They can watch an awesome animated Toy Story book as it reads to them (I read to my kids everyday, but try as I might I can't make books animated). She can watch cartoons on netflix anywhere in the house. And that's just in the first few weeks, Who knows what they'll come up with months from now. I went on a trip a few weeks ago and took my iPad and my laptop. My laptop is still in it's bag.

Now I am like some of you in that your against apple's walled garden, but it's a big damn garden and I've yet to find something I need that's not in here.

My 3 Grandkids are always playing App Store games on our iPhones and iPod Touches when we travel.
They play against each other too. And if there are only 2 devices they will actually "share" (!)
They don't "watch" anything. (movies)

DVD in best buy is $15 for 4 episodes of Dora the Explorer or some other kids cartoon like Little Einsteins. On iTunes is $15-$50 for a season of 26 episodes depending on the show and the season. and they have pretty much every other kids movie or cartoon that is out on DVD

As soon as I heard about the iPad 3G, the first thing I though of was velcro-attaching it to the dashboard to use as a GPS unit, with full true Google Maps functionality ("My Maps"). A couple of 3m Command Jumbo Hook "velcro" strips should hold an iPad on the dash just fine, until some company makes a decent suction mount.

and ensure that your kids don't have that pesky ability to reproduce. Regular laptops are not actually laptops but notebooks with fiery death awaiting the poor little laps of the kids who watch a two hour movie with them. Plus a laptop playing a DVD probably won't have enough power to last that long.

Actually, it's more appropriate to say that it can WITHSTAND those temperature extremes. While your kids may not be in the car when it's 120+F, those players still are. Try leaving a iPad out on the seat for about a year in Arizona and see if it still works (direct sunlight at the height of summer here can melt most common plastics outright). That "ridiculously expensive" DVD system is so priced because it's built to last and survive over the long-term in an environment with extreme temperature variations a

We have two vehicles - one with an integrated dual-screen entertainment system (screens fold down from the ceiling), and another vehicle with a $100 DVD player strapped to the back of the seat (actually came with two screens, but the wires going between them got in the way too much so we only use one screen).

Let me say there is no comparison. Having an integrated system is so much better it's not even funny. There are audio IR blasters integrated into the ceiling which allow 4 people to listen to the movie simultaneously via wireless headphones. If the movie is piped through the car's sound system then it is in full surround through the Bose audio system. My HTC Touch Pro 2 has video out, so I can plug it into the car and play Youtube, encoded videos, etc, right through the integrated system. Wired headphone jacks throughout, DVD controls on the ceiling in addition to standard IR remote.And the best part is the screens fold flat into the ceiling and totally disappear. Out of sight, out of mind, can't be stolen, scratched or have crap spilled on them.

The BEST option, if money was no object, would be to purchase a vehicle with a fully integrated entertainment system, then add an "automotive" PC that can play back through that system as a secondary display (with the primary display being a touch screen in the front).

The BEST option, if money was no object, would be to purchase a vehicle with a fully integrated entertainment system, then add an "automotive" PC that can play back through that system as a secondary display (with the primary display being a touch screen in the front).

the BEST option, if money was no object, would be to add a display at each seat, with a slide-out VGA touch display in the dash for the driver, and with a computer to serve each seat, running whatever it is that you prefer. For instance I might opt for Windows XP with XBMC as the shell for the driver's interface, specifically so that I could run some quality navigation software without virtualization. Using a PC with 5.1 (or better) audio and simply running it into amplifiers with their own volume controls

The only motivation to buy such an expensive integrated DVD player is... because it's integrated.

You don't have LCDs loosely attached to the back of your seat, sliding slowly from the head rest to the floor, with ugly and cumbersome straps. You don't have dangling wires going from the player to the screen, with the kids feet in between. You don't have the DVD player resting on the middle seat or on the floor, sliding from far right to far left every time you change direction. You don't have a 12ft power ca

Doesn't the exact same thinking apply to any personal computer that isn't bundled with the car? If a $500 iPad is trouble for Ford, then a $400 laptop that can do anything, even things not approved of by Apple, is even more trouble for Ford.

I know some mini-itx boards support quad cores. That would be enough to do just about anything you can think of. Emulators, movies, etc. And if your worried about bumps boot from a usb stick. Or if your hard core about storage, SSD.